(1927 - 1991) |
These poems are posted here with permission of Marty Jerome (Mrs. Judson Jerome), who
held all copyrights to Jud's writings until her death in 2007. Marty graciously told me I
could put any, and as many, of Jud's poems on the Web as I wished. These poems (except
for "Its Own Reward") were included in the collection Thirty Years of Poetry 1949-1979,
published by the late David Yates at Cedar Rock Press (now defunct). "Its Own Reward"
appeared in Jud's pamphlet Myrtle Whimple's Sampler, (Sticks Press/Trunk Press 1977).
Judson Jerome passed away on August 5, 1991 at the age of 64. This obituary appeared
in the New York Times.
Martha-Jane "Marty" Jerome passed away on November 6, 2007. This obituary from the
Yellow Springs News misstates her age as 87. Marty was 77.
I do not know who, if anyone, currently holds any copyrights to Jud's writings. Jud did not
believe in the concept of copyright. He wanted his writing to be disseminated as widely as
possible as long as he received credit for it.
Asterisks indicate poems that Jud preferred (as he noted in the Table of Contents of the
above-mentioned collection). Some that he apparently did not "prefer" are among those
that I most strongly cherish and enjoy. I have tried to strike a balance between his
favorites and mine.
I believe this is the only extensive site on the Web for the poetry of Judson Jerome,
one of the very finest American poets of the Twentieth Century.
Hayes Walker
July 2001
Click a title to select an individual poem.
Scroll down to read all the poems.
Deer Hunt* Six poems from: Instructions for Acting
Imitation of Nature Improvisation
Negative* Drunk Scene*
Cages* Sally Gives In Gracefully*
At the Dancing School of the Sisters Schwarz* Fool and Clown*
Departure Sally as Cleopatra
The Ocean's Warning to the Skin Diver* Nightcap*
The Muse and I
Poetry Editor as Miss Lonelyhearts Three from: Myrtle Whimple's Sampler
In the Faculty Lounge A Daddy's Love
The Bargain
Its Own Reward
Cultural Relativity Guardian of the Highway*
To My Reluctant Students of Poetry
Elegy for a Professor of Milton Four from: Homage to Shakespeare
Flight by Instruments* Sonnet 18
Loving My Enemies* Sonnet 22
The Peddler Sonnet 128
Not Even a Bridge* Sonnet 138
Uncle Ed
On Mountain Fork*
Bells for John Crowe Ransom
Gull at Play
Because the warden is a cousin, my
mountain friends hunt in summer, when the deer
cherish each rattler-ridden spring, and I
have waited hours by a pool in fear
that manhood would require I shoot, or that
the steady drip of the hill would dull my ear
to a snake whispering near the log I sat
upon, and listened to the yelping cheer
of dogs and men resounding ridge to ridge.
I flinched at every lonely rifle crack,
my knuckles whitening where I gripped the edge
of age and clung, like retching, sinking back,
then gripping once again the monstrous gun,
since I, to be a man, had taken one.
This soap ad shows, for no clear reason, birds
with geometric beaks and glad round eyes
sitting in nests floating in scalloped skies,
singing what seem to be mostly fifths and thirds
(as indicated by the arching staves
that imprint music on the air).
So bright
the tree, the birds, the blowing sheets so white,
so slick the page, so true the pledge that saves
scrubbing and money for all who buy the box
containing sunshine, that one trusts to art:
he knows life is illusion, that the part
of him concerned with toil and dirty socks
and ragged boughs and nests without a song
and warm, small, frightened hearts
is simply wrong.
I have lost the print, but in this negative
you can see her shape, if not much more. That black
is beach. Her hair, here white, was black. That white
is water, laced with black. Its roar and that
of the wind (not pictured here, except as her hair
flies out from her grey shoulders--they were brown)
drowned all our conversation. We lost track
that sun-bleached day (the sun here makes her frown)
of hours, words, kisses, sandwiches and beer,
all used in colorful affirmative.
We left our imprint on the sand. The sea
or wind in another season cleaned this away,
and now all black and white in each our minds
remains some blurry dent of how we lay,
some negative of warmth of other lips,
some scrape of sandy thighs, some taste of salt.
I forget now how it was, but how it ends
is negative, the afterglow of a glimpse,
turned inside out, unfleshed, with strength for fault,
remembered in the nerves transparently.
First I was burst. My rib
(or wife) next swelled with life
which split her. Thus a daughter
we contained safe in a crib.
The crib grew small: like a rick
of blankets, dolls, its slender
slats burgeoned, burst before
the girl was three--a quick
climber and kicker, she,
who rocked crib like a carton
and made us fear her falling;
of crib we set her free--
gave her a bed with bars
halfway. She could climb out
safely and in dark scout
for the door, come to the stairs,
where we had put a gate
to prevent her tumbling, half
sleeping, on down. The self
seems slow to save its pate.
Parents hypothesize
a girl's falls patiently.
Now she hates sleep, would
lie down never if her eyes
like cage doors never closed
her in, always at terminal
of tether like an animal.
Tonight, when I supposed
she slept, I heard a faint
scraping upstairs in the hall.
I went, and nearly fell
across her, trapped, and saint-
ly stretched on the hard floor,
arms like parentheses
around her head, her nose
making a miniature snore.
I carried her, moist and warm,
to my idea of comfort,
kissed her, left her under
covers: asserted the norm.
Asserted my love, that just
and outer cage, which she
will come to, certainly,
as sleepless daughters must,
in rage. The young must wage
hate on all bars. All bars
must be shaken, must be dared.
Fathers must bear the rage.
And she, at dawn, like fate,
will toddle to our bed, plead
that Papa wake. Indeed,
no love is sweeter than this hate,
nor hate so hard as age:
Dear child with touching hands,
night, day, age, youth, our veins,
our very ribs are cage.
AT THE DANCING SCHOOL OF THE SISTERS SCHWARZ*
Silently grave as voyeurs in a powder room,
we fathers sit with coats folded on knees
this visiting day, watching Miss Hermene
teach fourteen girls the elements of ballet.
Accompaniment is struck in chords upon
the Steinway grand. Outside a siren grieves:
law for a speeder below. Miss Hermene slaps
time on her thighs, her words exact and low.
Her muscular, liquid arms demonstrate grace
to daughters in pink tights along the bar.
Battement tendu! and fourteen arches curve.
She spots a limp leg, squats for a better view,
then sweeps from child to child, chin high, commanding--
love in her old eyes, discip1ine on her tongue,
correct as a queen, and fierce beneath her charm.
Our girls come hushed and quick, hair back, nails clean;
chubby or bony, concave or convex of chest,
gangly, petite or tough, their slippers whisper
in the studio. No scratching or wriggling now,
but each projects life to her pointed toe.
My own, the smallest, still sticks out her tummy,
curving her limber spine. Her feet are flat,
her limbs thin. Braids swing as she takes correction
like kisses--with freckly cheeks and toothy grin.
Material comes raw, but Miss Hermene
makes girlflesh pirouette and count strict time.
covertly I squirm--loosely sitting, like nature,
thinking how daffodils look to a worm.
Glissez! Sautez! Pliez! Knees skinned at skating
now bend in diamond shapes around the room,
and fathers dream of the stage where ballerinas
are purer than people, selfless, without age,
and Miss Hermene in her Ohio winter
dreams rigorous designs for the new day
and tender swarm: the power of grace, the truth
of timing, the immortality of form.
DEPARTURE
(for Basil Pillard, 1897-1956)
My errand was to drive him to the train.
He left (forgiving as the sun) the June
ignorant loves, extravagant green, and rode
human by human with me in the car.
Words, our intriguing spiders, we held fondly
in distrust. Facts spoke: The train was simply there,
seething like a planet stopped in space,
his seat reserved, his briefcase full of such
preoccupying things a soul might want
at night, or when eternal countryside
made looking outward dull. The acrid air
of the depot made us hope that progress might
not be to be regretted, and urgency honked
around us in the street. That street I had
to traffic in, but he would touch it crossing
as one steps lightly on a stone, mindful
only of what he takes to be a shore.
What words for now? Those creatures squatted dark
and anxious in webs back in our brains. We smiled
assurance that when we were whirled away
we would remain as real as now, although
worlds spun so fast (the universe expands),
and I was fortunate to feel at last
his eyes engage mine like extended hands.
All this was wordless: nor speak of the felt truth,
nor the blast of vacancy in the train's wake,
nor the departure of the iron mechanical
indifferently bearing its burden, groaning its orbit,
nor its exhaustive pulse or wail, but there
feel firm engagement of eyes--across the air.
THE OCEAN'S WARNING TO THE SKIN DIVER*
Bored, darling, with my public play of green?
You say you have seen that belly dance before?
Tired of my puffs and spangles, liquid shoulder
bare in the moonlight? You ask if there is more?
Oh, I have seen you drink away the hours
watching my grinding can-can down the bar.
I know the signs: You are rich and over thirty.
Liquor has lost its kicks, like your fast car,
like life in air, like habitats of mammals
(those fat expatriates, their blood salt sea)
and now you fit your feet with primal flippers
and, trailing bubbles, gravitate to me.
Yes, I have thrills of silence and of shadows,
a million eyes and whips for appetite,
all tentacles and lips and blue recesses,
until, entranced, you drift beneath the light
into the oldest water and the darkest,
where thumps the music of a whirligig.
Swimmer, do not pursue my coldblood heartbeat.
You slip from fun to love, whose crush is big.
THE MUSE AND I
(1958)
She shuddered down her violet lids
suggesting that I write for kids
or syndicate a daily sonnet. Worse
I might take up sex and write free verse
to make an undergraduate hit
with girls who, in the drugstore, sit
and blot enormous lips on tissues,
talk atheism and other issues,
and spend long afternoons debating
which Poet is most fascinating.
My muse said if I learned the tricks
I might aspire to write for slicks
those quatrains which find their repose
in boxes in the midst of prose.
"In fact," she said, "without much trouble, you
might lecture for A.A.U.W.
on poetry of health and cheer,
recite, and sniff your boutonniere."
"Horrors," I cried. "I want to be
a serious poet--who writes for free
(except for an occasional corker
fit for Atlantic or the New Yorker).
I am an artist with my eyes
on the N.B.A. and the Nobel Prize.
I want to be revered, not paid,
for sixty pages a decade.
I want to string a metric fence
around a pure experience
and catch the trauma of my times
in broken phrases, dissonant rhymes
and images that split the sun,
thoughts seen in a stereopticon,
appearing deeper than they are,
or kaleidoscopic as a star
with shifting bits of ambiguity,
intriguing for a perpetuity . . . "
"Can it," she said. "You think that you
can ever attain the cosmic view,
the voice with timbre, or procure
an academic sinecure?"
"I must," I said. "Consider: I'm
applying for a Guggenheim!"
"Well, if your collar is not dirty,
you're true to your wife and over thirty
(so won't be 'younger' many more years),
have hair cut well above your ears,
and students call you 'good old guy,'
I guess you roughly qualify.
Now, first, collect a coterie . . ."
"Wait! I want to write poetry!"
Don't interrupt. I'm teaching you.
There are several things you have to do:
Make anti-scientific taunts,
and hail a West Coast Renaissance,
but court the Kenyon-Sewanee axis
with poetry that bores, relaxes;
warble a colorless coloratura,
memorize every Botteghe Oscure . . ."
"I want to write! I've got the call!"
"Oh, son, write seldom, if at all.
But, if you must, all sense disjoint:
Poetry must not have a point.
And break the iamb, lose the beat;
a sense of rhythm means defeat.
Abuse the public's brain and ear,
and learn this motto: Be not clear.
Rare language is your diadem,
and words are blossoms: Rest on them
like a butterfly and aspirate,
for sentences are out of date.
Allude to languages that you
find quoted in some old review.
Your titles should be borrowed Latin,
the lines below like shreds of satin.
Let no one see how thoughts are linked:
magnificently indistinct!
Your touch with life you'll have to cure:
Draw all your stuff from literature.
Your showmanship is simply null:
Be precious, difficult, and dull.
And, last, I speak a word I hate:
Never," she gagged, "communicate!"
POETRY EDITOR AS MISS LONELYHEARTS
Round the horizon I see silhouettes
of sweet old ladies who live with their pets,
parents neglected by their children, scholars
bullied by schoolmates, men in starchy collars
whose daily wisdom always falls among swine,
girls who read on Saturday night, fine wine
merchants, inmates, shut-ins, neglected wives.
Love is a seller's market. Hope arrives
in bundles on my desk, these poems blest
with kisses, tears, stamped envelopes--self-addressed.
I hover by the box marked mine as pale
as a lover waiting his fair dame's abuse,
watching the manicured fingers sort the mail
till I may dangle in my daily news.
A list of books I cannot buy nor read.
A device to solve my problems, once it's mastered.
Rejections right and left. An ad for seed.
A reader writes to tell me I'm a bastard.
Colleagues are sweeping past me like race horses.
My family regrets I turned out rotten.
My friends are getting ulcers or divorces.
PAST DUE are bills for goods I have forgotten.
Remember that young poet whom I failed?
I see that he just won a Pulitzer Prize.
Another, whom I passed, has just been jailed
and needs a reference, graduateschoolwise.
A committee to eliminate committees
wants me to chair a meeting all day Sunday.
Foundation heads from all the Eastern cities
will drop in for a chat at dawn on Monday.
Just think how here and there across the nation,
across the campus, even across the seas,
people address to me such flagellation!
I pant beside the mailbox on my knees.
Be beautiful as you are, and for
wit winking electric and your patience that
contains our family like a shore,
your tilted bones, your circular day
tending a household which, like a pile of fish,
needs perpetual putting away,
or, getting pound per ounce,
threading your spirit endlessly to patch
our metaphysical accounts,
yet leaping at dawn from the bed's warm pool,
landing on sand and flopping on to get
dozens of daughters off to school,
remain receptive as an eye,
enduring and softly holding as a glove
which I completely occupy
reliably as a nightlight glow,
and every other day I'll take out garbage
and say again each decade or so
in a poem, awkward, inexact,
how I am wealthier than all professors
for having made this lucky pact.
This, as you say, alimentary canal
wired for sound, which, besides, is my youngest daughter,
has her own outlook: noise, a hovering smile,
a verifiable nipple--and a few
feet beyond that a haze of blue. We must
not judge those with other ways of life. Sir,
although those random hands with flecks for nails
look quaint to you, they are not quaint to her.
Those eyes that roll eccentric like a pair
of uncooperative forget-me-nots
discern a no more arbitrary world
than yours. That mushroom nose of hers is far
better for close work; useless, wrinkled tendril
legs are for snugger snuggling. What if she
cannot support her head? Can you yours? i.e., I mean
can you support the relatively small
center of your concern, now that your right
and wrong are somewhat more complex than milk
or absence of it? Or, now that the haze
is farther, is it clearer in your sight?
Agreed, this belly with appendages
will never do. We must exploit its fuss
and happiness. But if we westernize,
the convenience, remember, is to us.
TO MY RELUCTANT STUDENTS OF POETRY
My dog, house-broken, sleeping in the shade,
fattening, and petted past all lusting,
no longer sniffs at danger, no longer begs.
He will not starve. He dies there, well-adjusting.
My nervous father always had a goal,
devoting all his sense to beat the bank.
His end was practical--but all he left
was debt and memory of how he drank.
My mother, for security, sold twice
the quivering scarlet bushel of her heart.
One man threw darts at it. The other still
ignores it as it darkly flakes apart.
My wife could never honestly believe
in being what they trained her for from birth.
But having failed to be the bitch the world
rewards, she cannot now believe her worth.
And I have daughters tenderly aware
that life is to be lived. Their minds run loose.
Tomorrow they will don school uniforms
and learn to dedicate themselves to use.
Enlightenedly self-interested, my nation
dispenses cunningly, with kind contentment,
its wealth upon the water, but is hurt
by underdeveloped thanks and black resentment.
I am myself indifferent useful, knowing
the social forms and how to get ahead;
but if, at times, I wake to uselessness
and find delight in not yet being dead,
my numb soul stirs, as a dog will wake to bark,
disturbed by a deeply-layered jungle dream.
Involuntarily I shout the poem:
Perhaps we are more human than we seem.
ELEGY FOR A PROFESSOR OF MILTON
(for Albert Liddle, 1896-1967)
I cannot say once more ye laurels, nor
summon from shaded eyes a melodious tear.
The elegance that with your passing passed
demands diapasons, but we cannot hear
today the organ tones of eloquence.
Like sophomores who nodded in your class,
unequal to the challenges you posed,
we face the luminous with darkened glass
and slump before the dignity of truth.
And yet into our inarticulate trance
comes echoing your majestic utterance: death.
The toughened young demanding relevance
discern a distant trumpet sounded by
some straggler on the torn, relinquished field
and wonder at the loyalty of one
who, in some forgotten battle, will not yield.
What was the cause? Something about Milton?
Something about how that young man refused
to tolerate life--or death--devoid of meaning?
Some fury that some talents are misused?
Some faith that in a free and open encounter
rightness would prosper, error be exposed,
the venal could be driven from the Temple
(where they, God knows, for ages have reposed)?
And, now, have we heard the last notes from
a trumpet which survived the bomb's eclipse?
Did one out there in the mist-hung battleground
form noble music with his dying lips?
Has that historic war, we rightly question,
;anything much to do with here and now?
Dear friend, professor, who lived what you professed,
you would not, if you heard these words, allow
a claim to glory or a spur to grief.
Were I to call you hero you would smile.
Wryly humble, you force me to be honest:
That distant trumpet was not quite your style.
But, Albert, grant me, when a shepherd drowns,
another somewhat loudly sweeps the string.
Your way of life was music in the dark--
I say to one who knew himself to sing.
After, at Cincinnati, the March morning scabs of snow
along the runway, the roaring lift in a basement of atmosphere,
and, inside, signs (no smoking, fasten belts) blinked off,
after the pull off up in grey absorbing air,
we drowned in spit-thick fog, unstirred by our engines,
our thrashing doubtfulness, struggle from depth, beating
the neutral gas. We could not see from here to there,
but followed, we knew, up front, some gadget tweeting.
From the seat behind the wing, values, though, were gone:
no forward, backward, up nor down, nor color in the fog.
Even the engine thunder seemed subjective. A fear
that anything might materialize gave way to a negative nag
that there was nothing anywhere to hit. But when
one wing, like a swimmer's arm, broke through, and we heaved
our great silver weight into the clear, the pale Spring sun
grinned foolishly alone, a seal of foil, to be believed,
assertive on a blank blue document. That simple sun
was glad as reason as we sped on a straight course, now, high
above the clouds curled innocent as lard: Inside
we reached for magazines. Our engines hummed to the day,
until Dayton called us down, to sigh through all
that fog again, and East and South were only in the mind.
We turned our topcoats, spattered on the bottom of the tank,
snarled in traffic along thin highways of the land,
more faithful, though, for our one brief trip in the sun,
which must be, still, silly as a saint, up there
above this spew we breathe--not to God, but to sun and color,
to up and down, to men who ride the ether like a prayer.
I must love my enemies: I have made
so many of them. Whether I, drowning, flailed
rescuers, or, terrier-nervous, yapped,
defending God knows what from God knows whom,
or thought I was the jester, licensed to wound,
I drove you all away. I wanted room
to grow my crooked stem, so sprouted thorns,
or, as self-consuming candle, blindly burned
in guttering isolation, or vacuum-drained--
as a black hole does the sky--all warmth and light.
Emperor of sunny nursery play,
I took all as due, nor wondered how or why.
Pursuit of justice was a good excuse
to wear the jackboots of some public cause
and stab a friend for a stranger's brief applause.
It simplified affection's murky snarl
to make such clean incisions. I have hurled
babies and bathwater out for a better world.
But mostly I won your enmity with love
too fast too soon, my overwhelming wave
of self too bountiful, too gladly given.
To save yourselves from my self you were driven
if not to anger to politic escape.
I said I love you: You foresaw a rape.
You must have loved me, enemies, to have left,
dreading the waste and smother of my gift,
sensing my naked need to be received.
Hard love withholds indulgence: You withheld.
Such closeness both of us would soon have scalded.
You could avoid what could not be repelled.
Safer, of course, to love thus at a distance--
a dream of faces gone, but nearly kissed--
blending across the years without resistance,
yin lost in yang, and none knows when or how.
But there is safety even in my bower,
for I love you still--but do not need you now.
I opened a stall in the market with many placards.
WISDOM I offered. Surely they need that.
WIT NEW AND SECONDHAND for lighter moments.
FLATTERY should sell out in nothing flat.
HARD WORK I thought was something the world wanted.
HONESTY--spice for the discerning few.
DIPLOMACY for those with much to lose.
For those with nothing I promised to be TRUE.
FACTS for skeptics, FAITH for mystics. VISION
for the undecided, also for the blind.
COMMITMENT for the serious, and for
the frivolous I had an OPEN MIND.
I had some SKILL and lots of GOOD INTENTIONS.
I knew THE WAY, but was WILLING TO BE LED.
I CAN BE HAD--a general sort of come-on.
Specifically, I added, GOOD IN BED.
IF YOU DON'T SEE WHAT YOU WANT JUST ASK,
EVERYTHING MUST GO INCLUDING ME.
JUST MAKE AN OFFER. I scratched that out: DON'T BOTHER.
STOCK, SHOP AND ONE SHOPKEEPER ALL FOR FREE.
But all the traffic passed me by, attracted
to a scrawny fellow with a screechy yelp
and scrawly note pinned to his scrap of jacket
pitifully announcing I NEED HELP.
And then one day a gorgeous buxom maiden
pulled up in a Rolls. She'd found just what she sought.
She wheedled me with molten eyes of love.
"All I want," she said, "is everything you've got."
I hastily packed my cases, closed my shutters,
crouched by the counter, waited for darkness, to flee.
People aren't to be trusted--especially people
who show any interest in the likes of me.
Across the creek--you cannot see from here,
but where those oaks hump over huddling their
summertime mysteries--
a house, barn, sheds,
spread all in darkness, grassless in brown decay.
On this side trees never attain such size,
and we have roads and fields and sun.
It may
have been disease. More likely hunger. I
forget what people used to say.
Once, as
a boy, I came down off that mountain carrying
squirrels, alone, and stepped into their clearing
as into a cave. A chill was in the air.
A hen muttered and ran into the barn.
A loose gate ached to silence. Silence, save
for the growling of the creek, and darkness, save
for scattered coins of sun in the brown dry silence.
The house hunched still, the barnlot bare, but by
the well a man stood gaunt, arrested, his
dark hand on the white bare arm of his little girl,
both of them staring.
I, of course, said Hi.
From somewhere a hound gruffed greeting. When
I left, perhaps they moved. If they had been speaking,
perhaps they spoke again.
Oh, we fished up
and down, hunted the hills, and saw them seldom.
They never returned our wave. Such hate. Or fear.
Skittish as chipmunks, they would stand on the bank
and back into the brush if we drew near.
And then they were gone, their stock, their chickens, gone,
their buildings no more silent than before.
Kids played there some, but ghosts were in the air,
and snakes and spiders under boards.
So queer,
that people tried to live so long and hard
with nothing but each other, no cultivation
that I ever saw, no crops, no trips to the store--
as though a family were a cage, or world . . .
Not even a bridge to get from there to here.
Even in heels you can walk today on the dirt path
by the river. Twelve years now,
have purpled the scars of that flood.
Just three you were: that little rump under your skirt
warming my hands carrying you in the rain . . .
I remember
it sinister, bleak, rolling by like a sheet of steel in a mill.
Linda, it rained for forty days that bad November.
Sweet fools of our dependencies! Wee lips, breath moist
on my neck, your patent leather shoes knocking my knees . . . .
We were drawn. Forced. To him, in his hut. For help! Just there
(all cornfield now) it stood. Child, think of Sinbad, kind
to his Old Man of the Sea, Bre'r Rabbit taking hold
of tar. Now, freed, I would skip with as good a heart to the patch
of briars native to our breed!
Give me your hand.
I'll help you cross the ditch. Right here I skidded off the road
(gravel in those days) seeing the bridge gone, the land
level with water. I pitched into that bluff, nosed awry
like a tipped turtle. Reversed. Rocked, rocked, and spun the tires
until the differential sat in the grassy sog.
You, honey, laughed at the fun.
Nothing to do but drag
you into the wet world: gusts of rain, and, in the trees,
darkness suspended, still as smoke from Autumn fires.
I slopped along, my topcoat flapped around you, toward
his light, like a star, downstream.
We spared you the worst all these years.
You knew the least, were shocked by the vomiting, say, or fits
of fury in the house, or his tears. I was relieved
you knew no more in your simplicity. He died,
nor are you simple still.
Let me say, then, there were nights
I guarded the hall--of our own home. He claimed love. Love!
Think of it: finding him sprawled on the covers beside
you in your junior bed. God knows for what! And you
said, waking once, you liked to cuddle Uncle Ed!
Uncle indeed. I tell you I walked the hall, not knowing
into which bedroom he might head!
You wince, my darling.
Such foul imagining? Perhaps, but at your age
what can you guess of how men are, drunk, in the dark?
Nor was he so old--though he seemed old, bent to the stove
in his hut that night, suspenders crossed on his long johns,
his white hair hanging, long hands rattling the coffee pot.
He aged, but as crabapples do--green till they rot.
I stood inside the doorway holding you, seeing him stare
with eyes like little blisters at the cold flood tearing
the earth ten yards from his door.
Well, we couldn't stay there.
Help us? He was delirious--and nearly washed under!
I wrapped him, led him wailing into the rain, his bare
head tossing as he walked, white to the sky, until
he slipped and knelt in a puddle babbling of God--too weak
to rise.
So you walked, baby, (thin legs splashing), scared,
watching me heave him along, watching us lurch and spill . . . .
You feed a stray cat. Must you keep on feeding? Lend
a hand. Are hands forever tied? In death not spared?
For though I saw him buried, I saw your tears . . . .
What sticks
when hearts rub hearts? What breaks between when one man leans
his shoulder to another in the blast? See--no
wind weaves in the corn shoots. See--the river today is still.
Don't stare at me: Consider what this springtime means.
I feared exposure might have made you sick. Once home,
I rubbed your tender limbs in your hot bath. Your mother
gave her imagination to the derelict
Angel I'd found--like one left wounded like a hunter--
working the spoon between his chattering teeth, and since
he had no bed she bundled him in ours. (We slept
on couches, felt purified by charity.) Next day,
rain gone, the sun broke yellow on his gentle head.
He took my fingers in his own and pressed them to
his lips (his chin unshaven), spoke with mellow accent
and watery eyes. He lay as soft as a pallid Prince
at levee--in my violet woolen robe.
Ah, you,
at three, were quick as she to mother. Often I saw
you wipe his lips where the egg ran. I saw your fingers
push back his satin hair. You never wiped my lips.
There was no need.
He lingered like a hurt that would
not heal--for seven years--eating our meals, making
an attic haven in our home. He taught you language,
taught you to call him Uncle . . . .
Yes, I grant he tried
to hold an honest job, to build a sober life--
but still he stayed, unfit as a prophet for the world.
Your mother took his side. At last, of course, she died.
I took the chance to move him out--respectfully--
on grounds of impropriety: a growing girl,
two men, you know. Like a guilty dog surprised, he fled,
taking a room downtown. He did not cease to haunt.
He loved me like a brother. Loved my wife, well, more
than as a friend. And you . . . . How did he love you, Linda?
Oh, Ed would love you any way you would let him . . . .
I stood
restored today, sucked spring by the grave's side. You cried, kneeling,
as the boxed prince sank. Linda, today the river is blue.
That hut of crates, tin signs, long since has washed
into the world's debris, that cowshed where we found
the weakling lover. Linda, he was old and smelled . . .
with his one stained tie, that barbarous hat (his ragged crown).
Martyr? He used pain. Martyrs have some use. He served
only as someone to give to, a sink for love. So storms
blow us to one another's arms, each Lear compelled
to bend to a fool, each fool to a Lear. Each body
warms a body, drains a body's heat. Linda, he is cold.
I cannot even lift you now. Stand close. This skirt--
tailored to shape what once I held in one hand! See--
you've grown beyond my grasp. Your head lay here. It hurt
to sniff that sweet hair pasted by the rain. Oh, Linda . . .
what did he say on your walks? Where did he take you when
all afternoon the two of you were gone--and came
in flushed to the table, eyes softer, deeper than flowers,
cheeks tight with private smiling?
No answer? And your glance
condemns--as if what you saw I could never see . . . .
What are you seeing, Linda? What do you see in me?
Has love made him invulnerable? His talk of love
for the weak, wrong, young, foolish, criminal, possessed--
for drunkards caught in huts at floodtime--these were his pleas,
reposed in my chair. He begged indulgence, really, for
himself. Is that what brought you to his narrow knees?
And I would carry brandy from the kitchen. I listened.
I was persuaded, too. Of this I stand confessed.
I thought I saw in him a Way, a force. I kept
his glass full, raged at my wife, lowered my voice to him . . . .
But let that force weave down a midnight hall! At night
there is excess of loving in the world!
For all
I gave, I was his last confider. Brother? Hurled
to the wall when he felt impelled! Oh, charity
was in his name, not more. Or say his loves conflicted . . .
still, think of the cost--to heart (dear Lord, to purse!) Though I
forgave and forgave again (your mother, in fact, insisted),
and daily I would go to work and leave him wiping
my household like a rag. I saw the cost of love:
Such giving makes us hate. What kept me patient? Was
I walking in his path, unjudging, suffering all?
No. Though I thought so, no. We nurse our own hearts first!
I bit back all protest, condemned myself, revered:
I handed him the evening paper time after time,
sensing he had a prior right to mine. Was he so blest?
To sit like a saint in the lamplight? Or, when he died,
to bring a hundred people to the door?
I had
no need of love: Is that why you mourned three nights straight,
indifferent if I came or went, the waxy body
lying in the coffin demanding all your heart? Mere man?
Or was it what he said: that we are the stuff of stuff
once dead, so why so much pettiness now? That self is sin?
Oh Linda, he had self enough for all of us!
Has female love no pride? Spirit, you murmur? Spirits,
the doctor said. Ulcers. He could not digest bread.
Nor has he spirit to return, as we have done,
to the scene of the crime--where he coiled at our ear and hissed
that we should disregard the facts and live on love--
narcotic love! It kept us reeling all these years.
We owe it all to Uncle Ed.
What? Again grieving?
Is that like Daddy's girl? Rather, delight we have
the Old Man off our backs--nor are we likely now
to bear his kind again: The road is paved; this valley
has flood control. Our hearts are technically dated. We
may walk the dirt erect, your kisses all for me . . . .
But where did he take you, Linda? Why did your young hand
wriggle to his like a fish to a cave? What easy hours
swirled down that sink? What secrets were kissed into this palm?
I cannot bear your wonder, your eyes like silent flowers!
Six poems from:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ACTING
We have no prompter for this show. In fact,
I have never seen a script, although, of course,
all surely know the general story line.
It gripped us young, continues to intrigue
in spite of its familiarity.
A kind of dazzle from the klieg glare makes
us unaware, performing, of the fact
that no one sits out there in the dark house.
No intermission follows any act.
No gun fires blanks. We laugh at our own jokes.
Although not many of us have studied lines
and almost none is very strong or wise,
the show goes on. The curtain has already risen.
Fear silence. Look alert. And improvise.
No, don't act drunk. No drunk acts drunk except
when soberly he wants to hug the world
like sun-warmed laundry off the line and blindly
tumble--or else he's young and thinks it's smart.
We drinkers stand much straighter than we can.
A tinkle tells us when we tilt too far.
We talk like alum-eaters, listen like
lip-reading lovers, hiccup man to man.
Our insight blurs our gaiety. We think
our underwater vista, wobbly, blue,
is somehow truer than landscapes of air.
We reconfirm the facts with each new drink.
As children play at seriousness, we are
more sober, drunk, than we know how to be.
Our life is acting, speaking lines we learned
uncaring, but, the curtain up, we care.
Just play the scene as though you cared too much,
as though the wall might shift beneath your hand
(which walls, you know, may sometimes do). Just play
at holding something you can never touch.
Now scratching at the window, Sally, comes
your demon lover. Gather at the throat
your sheer white flowing gown. Your fingers fanned
at your lips, your shimmering hair undone, you float
to the casement and unlatch the shutter. Drums
trip at your temples; burning eyes expand
as Henry nimbly vaults across the sill.
A glance around the room, and he pulls you to him,
your spine bending. Your hands, like captured birds,
struggle around the face which snaps its fill
from mouth, cheeks, neck and shoulders. Still no words
as he darkly drives you to the bed and down.
No cries for help, for, after all, you drew him,
as petals ask for digging of the bee.
Accept his scalding crush--though fearfully.
Curtain--as Henry flings aside your gown.
Relax--they have done it this way time out of mind:
same set, same costume, no props of any kind.
The fool now enters to the clown. This scene
suggests a kind of circling dance--a moon
around a dumpish earth, a terrier winding
his leash around a pole, tugging, binding--
a mind that buzzes like a gnat about
a head that sees the world without a doubt--
Iago, rendered by a zany, turning
a dark clown into a tower of slow burning--
the fancy taking to a curious fact--
or fine-finned fish that contemplates a hook--
a lady slicing cheese--a girl engaging
in fatal courtship with a lion aging--
a poet, licensed by a sullen world
to tease its snake of evil and be killed--
the swirl of water round a stone, eroding--
a stranger lusting at a rustic wedding.
The fool, of course, is free to flit around.
The clown must keep his socks upon the ground.
Your flail of exasperation is too real,
is too much you, too, well, revealing, as
one sees in a window, passing, some wife raising
domestic hell. We look away. We know
too well.
Acting is lying. It does not do
to have your Regan, when Gloucester is gouged, gasp,
or Herod drool too naturalistically
as the veils fall. Spare us, in art, from what
you happen, in fits of mood, to feel. For you
are Cleopatra, now, not Sally. At
the end of the act you die. You do not go home.
But not that arching gesture, either, grieving
like an oak in a storm. Remember: You are Sally.
You love because the book says love. You wear
a crown because this is a play.
Acting
is honesty, the courage to accept
our false condition. One sews the wound of self,
but self seeps through the stitches, as the dancer
ends on one weary leg that must, in art,
not tremble. It trembles--like an arrow spent
in the target's eye.
Perform! If hurt, achieve
silence, and do not giggle when you are gay.
Create the moment for which you must rise.
Now Antony has gone (offstage). You are bereft,
would wail or drink except, alone, you know
the public sits, a spotlight blanks your eyes.
You keep the beat, and Sally blooms within
as phony Cleopatra lifts her chin.
Peel off your beard, cream all the pancake off
before the mirror in your dressing room. The face
emerging slowly is more weary than
that of the king you played--who died. With half
your life gone, Henry, you are living
each evening one foreshortened life: Such pace
is murderous. That king, night after night,
drags down the sky upon his head. Your head
must throb as you lie dead beneath his crown.
I saw you back of the flats, waiting a cue.
A girl was taking stitches in your robe.
Your lips rehearsed your lines. Suddenly you
were on: The wasp buzzed nobly in the web,
but the web wound. Not once have you broken through.
How white you seem in the mirror now, a greasy towel
protecting your velvet doublet, your sleeves shoved back.
We wonder together how men bear up under
their artificial crowns, their final acts,
the poet's blast of thunder, life condensed
(which is hard enough to take, God knows, dispensed
a minute at a time). Oh, art is a way
of making a living--sacrifice of kings
to charm the corn. We get what we are giving--
a nightly murder, life day after day.
Illusion, actor, sweetens as it sours.
Let's have a drink. It was a hard two hours.
Three poems from:
MYRTLE WHIMPLE'S SAMPLER
Judson Jerome published about a dozen poems in which he assumed the persona of
Myrtle Whimple, a "garden variety poet." His reasons for this ruse are probably complex.
Some of Myrtle's themes parallel some of Jud's. (Try reading "A Daddy's Love" and "On
Mountain Fork" back-to-back.) In "Guardian of the Highway," one of the careers mentioned
as "things men do" is to "buy mineral rights from failing farms," which is essentially how
Jud's father earned a meager living. "Its Own Reward" expresses a truth that Jud taught
in his articles and books about writing poetry: Poetry is its own reward, and one should not
expect it to bring any other rewards.
How does a little girl learn of love?
From her daddy, still and strong.
On Sundays he goes fishing,
And he lets her tag along.
"Why are you digging, Daddy?"
He never says a thing,
But scoops the worms into the can--
His way of answering.
"Don't stay out late," calls Mommy.
He lights up his cigar.
"Remember that child's bedtime!"
He simply starts the car.
He lets her watch him thread the worm
Wiggling on the hook
And cast the weighted, baited line
Into the dark brown brook,
And when the cork is floating free,
And all is under control,
He takes his bottle from his pocket
And lets her hold the pole.
But when the cork goes under hard,
He grabs the pole again,
Jerks, curses at the naked hook--
For that is work for men.
Then when she has to wee wee he
Directs her to the bushes,
And when she tries to talk to him,
Finger to lip, he shushes.
All afternoon in silence they
Sit and don't scare the fish,
And though they don't catch any, it's
All that a girl could wish
To sit beside her daddy and
To help him home at night
And drift away to dreamland
Hearing her parents fight,
Learning that hugs and kisses are
Just not her daddy's way,
And you can be sure he loves you most
When he has least to say.
When I started writing poems
It was just a thing to do,
Like embroidery
Or a game of solitaire,
Then it got to be a habit,
And I wrote 'em right on cue
In the kitchen, laudromat,
Or anywhere,
Just to keep my fingers busy
And to keep from being bored,
Since poetry's its own reward.
Then my folks all started seeing them
And asking me for more,
And each read them
With a chuckle or a tear,
Then they said I ought to publish
And sell them in a store,
So each verse could be
A treasured souvenir.
Now you know I was delighted
To have struck a heartfelt chord,
Since poetry's its own reward.
I paid to have a book of poems
Bound up and stamped in gold,
And they sold
Like overcoats in the Sudan.
When the piles down at the bookstore
Began to flake and mold,
I paid to have them hauled
Home in a van.
Well, poetry is something
That it doesn't hurt to hoard,
Since, after all, it is its own reward.
Now a wave of generosity
Came welling through my soul.
I thought, "Hang the cost!
I'll give those books away!"
So I listed all my relatives,
Of friends I made a poll.
I passed them out
At Joe's All-Nite Cafe.
I knew folks would appreciate
What they could not afford,
Since poetry is its own reward.
I mailed them to celebrities
And editors and such,
Gave them to bums
(I am so democratic),
And yet, for all my giving,
It still seemed I couldn't touch
The weight that strained
The rafters in my attic.
Sometimes I may have failed
To render thanks unto the Lord
That poetry's its own reward.
And finally the truth dawned
I'd been missing all along:
My poems are much too good
For all but me!
And if I write another,
I'll protect it from the throng.
I'll bottle it,
And throw it in the sea!
Then maybe some poor castaway
Stuck in an ice-bound fjord
Will learn thereby it is its own reward.
GUARDIAN OF THE HIGHWAY*
Cousins and kids, all gather round
For Uncle Erasmus has come to town,
The mystery man, Aunt Tilly's pride
She talks about, but seems to hide,
Now out of the darkness, out of the cold,
With tales to tell of the open road.
So turn off the TV, put out the dog,
Turn on the gas for the Permalog,
And gather round your Uncle's knees,
And he will tell, if you say please,
Adventures bold in No-Man's land:
For Uncle Ras is a Toll-Booth man.
How does he get there? How does he leave?
What are his joys? What's his pet peeve?
Who does he talk to? What does he say?
Does he prefer working night or day?
Do drivers ever do things strange?
How big a bill has he had to change?
Does he ever sit? Does he ever smile?
Does he go to the bathroom once in a while?
Does he close up his window in a storm?
Has he ever worn out a uniform?
Just try to imagine, if you can,
Tales to be told by a Toll-Booth man!
Once Uncle Ras was a boy like you
And dreamed of doing things men do:
Fly a plane or put out fires,
Capture crooks, put on snow tires,
Stick needles into people's arms,
Buy mineral rights from failing farms,
Climb poles to plug in telephones,
Make dinosaurs out of old bones--
Such occupations are not rare,
But one in a million has a flair.
What made Ras change his whole life plan
And choose to become a Toll-Booth man?
So gather round and you shall learn
The secret urge that deep did burn
And made Ras stand out from the herd,
Hearing a call few ever heard
To learn the craft and Stoic art
To take his post and stand apart
Through rain and sleet and snow and hail
To gather coins and lift the rail
For car or camper, truck or bus,
Opening the road--and all for us!
Ras never joins the caravan,
But stays behind: the Toll-Booth man!
Four sonnets from:
HOMAGE TO SHAKESPEARE
Shall I compare thee to thy Aston Martin?
Thou hast a quicker pick-up and ignition.
Oh, engineers are still in kindergarten
puzzled by the design of thy transmission.
Compared to thee, thy elegant coupe
might park in stables and subsist on silage.
Thy dash has dials in luminous array
recording greater speed and better mileage.
Not fuel injection, no, nor carburetor
could formulate that essense, sweet concoction,
that keeps thee running earlier and later
and longer, when thy heap has gone to auction.
Thy beauty wrenches cannot make nor mar,
and even sonnets may outlast thy car.
I saw an old man stare at me this morning
with sudsy beard across the bathroom sink,
a spectre sent by Time to give me warning
that I am aging faster than I think.
Swiftly I thought of you, and swift grew young,
watching the white beard gurgle down the drain.
What Time unravels can be newly strung
by a kind of knitting action in the brain:
I know my heart is yours, and think yours mine,
that we are one beneath our tents of skin.
and, bound more fastly than Time can untwine,
our souls are Siamese, cannot untwin.
In you, my mirror, my own self I see,
thinking till age catch you, it can't catch me.
Not Kama Sutra ecstacy I praise--
with one leg wound around your you-know-what,
nor ointments which a flaccid lingam raise
to grease the pivot of a yoni (twat).
We tried all that: grunting the barbells up
while tightrope sauntering with feckless ease
before we swiveled round to swive or tup
swinging by knees aloft on a swift trapeze.
Diversity, a spice that jades the tongue,
forever adds to much too little more,
stringing one out until one is unstrung,
relieving boredom with new ways to bore.
Now that extreme I seek is bedrock norm:
the trackless freedom of our sonnet form.
I am not worthy of your love because
I think I am not worthy. You think you are
a creature crazed with webs of secret flaws
who can be loved by no one on a par,
thus must deceive to hold. I think you lie
when you say I am worthier than I think,
yet since I think you worthier than I,
I love your lie as a thirsty man loves drink.
We would correct our faults, except they thrust
deeper than steamy fissures in the earth.
We would ignore them, but we cannot trust
that giddy love which is not based on worth,
so when we lie together we lie asunder,
and what our bodies know our minds still wonder.
discipline:
the whispering s of line
above the canoe, the weightless fly thrown through
a gap in the branches, spitting to rest
on the still pool where the bass lay,
wrist true
in the toss and flick of the skipping lure.
love:
silence and singing reel, the whip
of rod, chill smell of fish in the morning air,
green river easing heavily under, drip
of dew in brown light.
At the stern I learned
to steer us--wavering paddle like a fin.
art:
tyrannous glances, passionate strategy,
the hush of nature, humanity slipping in,
arc of the line, ineffectual gift
of a hand-tied bug, then snag in the gill, the snap
and steady pull.
His life was squalid, his
temper mean, his affection like a trap.
I paddled on aching knees and took the hook.
My father shaped the heart beneath my skin
with love's precision:
the gift of grief, the art
of casting clean, the zeal, the discipline.
So gently he courted the world's body
and wittily her flesh fused,
she took him in before we were ready,
leaving us bemused.
From the tower where we went to ponder
his ontological poses
and listen for God's redeeming thunder,
we saw him sprinkling roses
and puttering round a tidy garden,
picking beetles from potatoes,
harvesting a bushel burden
nothing like Plato's,
a wiry gentleman in shirtsleeves
so distant he seemed abstract,
mulching young plants with dry old leaves
on a quarter-acre tract.
Hear then the bells at Gambier tolling,
see family by the cold hearth,
and us, descending slow and mulling
how poetry finds earth.
From the dune-crest I saw an idiot gull
bucking a squall on the fringe of a fretful sea,
awkward and suicidal, flapping for no good end,
fat, overcivilized, no windhover he,
but my heart stirred, for in my flapping jacket
I too had hurled myself for fun headlong
into a wind too big and had begun
to feel the cleansing chill. Who knows what fun
is any more? I remember pilgrims streaming
out of Boston to the sea, their autos heavy
with sacramental freight, their kleenex boxes,
innertubes and cameras, gazing, dreaming
of some salty absolution, bringing their young
to be blessed in the ceremony of the out-
of-doors. This Sunday morning sand-in-the-teeth
set has few libertines; they are devout,
wear hair shirts (blazing tropic blooms), submit
themselves like penitents to the salt and sun,
not to the exquisite, artful agonies, but
to discomfort crude and pure. Since I am one
of such a holy breed, I can explain
somewhat what moves the gull and me. Suppose
in your pale condition, ignorant of the soil,
your hands no longer agents of your brain,
you woke on a desert island in a jock-strap.
With no tool but a pocket-knife, you devise
a gimcrack the city makes in plastic, sells
for a dime back home. Just think how you would clap
your rediscovered hands in celebration.
Similarly, if in the granite State of Maine
by the clear cold sea you wrest some campfire comfort
from driftwood, scrubby spruce and rocks, or rain
cutting around a stretched tarp does not
quite penetrate, or if, at Fundy, where
the headlands loom all shaggy in the fog,
the coffee perks, and in your duffle a pair
of dry socks waits your weakening, you know
my recluse ecstasies. Even the beach crowd
enjoys a form of flagellation, not
to feel the pain, but to feel after each blow
some measure of relief. Of course no pleasure
is more phony, more a sign of civilization
past the crest--when we feel pressed brutally
to sensitize our faculties, to treasure
our crude things, a rusty nail in a grimy hand.
But the need lies deep. Life lives a self-willed test,
or else that gull, fighting the wind out there,
over the curling breakers, would welcome rest.
This page Copyright © 2002 by Hayes Walker/Poetry Criticism Service.
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